HostMonster Review

Bottomline: Forget HostMonster. Signup with BlueHost, which seems to be the better run of the two companies.

HostMonster is an ancient leviathan of a web hosting company that has served the needs of value-seeking bloggers for many years. Since being in the business from the mid-ninety’s, they have racked up a huge customer base, resulting in one million websites! The company belongs to the Endurance International Group family of hosting brands. They have a simple website; the most important information displayed front and center. Yet, nothing too eye-grabbing aesthetically.

Features and Pricing

HostMonster is one of your average ‘Unlimited Everything’ hosts, which is definitely ideal for beginners and those who are looking to host on a simple shared hosting platform. These types of web hosting services allow customers to refrain from breaking the bank, which is ideal for a long-term affordable solution.

On their ‘Hosting Features’ page, the details are broken up into features tables (familiar, huh?). The first table states what every single customer is entitled to on the platform. This generally includes unlimited disk space and bandwidth, unlimited domains (sub, add-on, parked, etc) and e-mail accounts. I’d also assume the number of databases is unlimited as well, which come in form of MySQL and PostgreSQL. Another displays mainly the supported technologies on the platform, such as Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby and many more. Below this is your stated ecommerce entitlement, which includes SSL Secure Servers and free generated certificates, as well as free varied shopping cart software to get you started. They also offer you free courtesy backups with your account. Beginners get a site builder included to create your website, as well as a free domain name for the life of your account.

The pricing structure is normal, considering the type of host HostMonster is. It is split into 3 time frames of the following:

12 months – $6.95pm

24 months – $5.95pm

36 months – $4.95pm

HostMonster offers an add-on package of sorts. It is called the ‘Pro Package’ and includes increased power, speed and security for $19.95pm. However, the way they have worded it makes it seem like the Pro Package is really just a low-end VPS that they are trying to spring on their customers, and let me tell you, they haven’t came out as subtle as they’re trying to be. Personally, I think this package patronises potential customers and attempts to rope them into a commitment they most likely won’t need, for a much larger monthly cost, which quite frankly, is just not worth it.

There is, however, a free dedicated IP and SSL certification to go with this package, but seriously, why not be honest and just include these as potential add-ons for a reasonable charge? I would honestly presume that hosting companies that have been a part of this field for so long would have better business practices with its customers and not try to latch onto quick sales by offering these types of deals. Let me clarify however, that I’m not singling out HostMonster with this tactic; this is a common tactic used by several hosting companies and it works. It does in fact generate sales, but I honestly believe that a business would generate more revenue being honest with its customers rather than trying to make a quick sale with add-on packages.

Terms Of Service

HostMonster’s terms of service agreement is a medium sized document of legal jargon which is fairly easy to comprehend. It starts off by clarifying its renewal policies. It states that fifteen days prior to the end of the lifespan of the account, as a courtesy and not an obligation, HostMonster will renew any domains and hosting accounts registered by the subscriber. This is important to note so you can make sure you are not billed for any unwanted domains, or if you wish to terminate your account.

It goes on to state its cancellation policy; which allows customers to receive a refund of all goods purchased, including any add-ons, before 3 days. If you request a refund after 3 days and before 30 days, you will receive a refund of your hosting account, but not any additional services. This is known as the absolute standard for refund policies given by hosting companies who operate on a thirty day money back guarantee.

It also explains the terms Unlimited when purchasing their services, and this one is extremely important, as most will know, unlimited does not really mean ‘unlimited’. They state that unlimited means they do not have any sort of limit or cap on their services, and customers will not be charged extra. It goes on to say that they believe this is important so customers can easily power their websites without the worry of suspension or large bills. Below this, it states what unlimited does NOT mean; which is that they are a shared hosting platform which accommodates to individuals and small businesses, and is not intended for use by large enterprises and companies. It also states it cannot unfairly prioritize users over others and everyone should receive the same hosting experience.

The agreement also states the standard applicable rules, such as termination of accounts can occur when customers use the service for hosting illegal content, hacking and warez purposes and so on.

Putting HostMonster to the Test

After completion of the initial sign-up process, I was shot at with three information-stuffed e-mails from HostMonster. The first e-mail contained information about choosing my password for my account and the process of transferring my domain if I wanted to. It then displayed a list of potential tasks to complete to get the full extent of my hosting experience. To the right of the e-mail was a sidebar, containing a lot more useful information such as login information, temporary control panel and website URL’s, nameservers for my domains, and a short FAQ if I needed any further assistance.

The second e-mail was the official welcome e-mail which contained a more in-depth ‘Getting Started’ wizard and a link to their video tutorials site, which contains a lot of extremely helpful tutorials of completing common and difficult tasks. The third e-mail was essentially a mirror of the first, yet giving more in-depth information of e-mail accounts and FTP logins. There was also a very simple verification process to go through to make sure everything was in order.

HostMonster make use of the cPanel control panel, as most other web hosts do. They have branded it with their own theme and logo and have the standard features most web hosts offer. They also make use of a software installer called Simple Scripts. Personally, I prefer SimpleScripts over others such as Fantastico and Softaculous due to its aesthetically pleasing interface, which is also incredibly easy to use and offers a great variety of scripts to install. I also decided to test a script on the installer by installing two different forum software scripts. These were Vanilla Forums and SMF, both of which performed immensely. The speeds were extremely fast, no bugs were found and both were very easy to customize and play around with; which is great news for beginners.

As always with these reviews, we monitor the up-time to make sure you customers get the reliability from a web host that you deserve. We use an amazing service called Pingdom to monitor the up-time and downtime of different web hosts. After a two-week monitoring period, we received the results that there was absolutely no downtime at all. 100% up-time is wonderful news and definitely strengthens the host’s reputation when they can back-up a 99.99% up-time guarantee.

Customer Support

HostMonster offer a bunch of different support options so each customer can receive assistance the way they want. They achieve this by allowing customers to e-mail them, contacting live-support as a quick solution, phoning them to get a more intimate support method or even by posting them a letter with your issues. They really have all bases covered here and the support they offer is quick and top notch. You can see an example of this through the chat transcript below:

Kevin: [1:24:46 PM] Welcome to our real-time support chat. I am taking multiple chats at a time. Please provide your domain name and the last four of the cpanel password or credit card to validate your hosting account if you have not yet provided it. How can I help you today?

Smair Habib: [1:24:46 PM] How do i add more domains onto my account!?

Kevin: [1:26:33 PM] An addon domain functions as it’s own website. It’s a domain that will operate as it’s own website but still be a part of the same hosting account. For example: if you owned abc.com and you just purchased xyz.com and you wanted to be able to host both domains on your HM account, then just assign it as an addon domain. This will create a folder inside of the public_html for this domain to enable you to store new content for this new domain. During this process the system will also need to create a subdomain for the addon domain to work properly.

[1:26:39 PM] In order to Addon or Park a domain please perform the following steps:

1- Login to cPanel
2- Click on either the “ADDON DOMAINS” or “PARKED DOMAINS” link
3- Click on the button that says “ADD DOMAIN” (if you’re not automatically directed there)
4- Carefully read and follow the instructions given on that page
NOTE – Remember the domain will not work through our servers until the name servers are pointing to our name servers.

[1:26:44 PM] HostMonster.com’s primary and secondary DNS (name servers) and their IP’s are as follows:

NS1.HOSTMONSTER.COM
NS2.HOSTMONSTER.COM
(case does not matter)

Once your name servers are modified it will take approximately 24-72 hours for your DNS to fully propagate to our servers.
During this period some people (including yourself) may be able to see your site while others cannot. This is perfectly normal as most Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) take 24-72 hours to clear their cache and update your DNS changes.

Please be patient during this propagation as there is nothing that can be done to speed the process along.

As you can see here, the chat was very quick and to the point. I think this is the best way of receiving support as its very fast, easy to understand, and there’s no tedious waiting or jumping through hoops to get answer. The representative also stated he was taking several calls, but the support answer he gave was almost instant. This is the kind of support that I think deserves a five star rating due to its informative nature.

My Conclusion

Not quite a full kraken among monsters but far from Barney the dinosaur, HostMonster remains a well-defined unlimited feature host that has a lot of variety in what they offer and will fit the needs of most individuals and small businesses. Unfortunately, they offer silly add-on packages that will most likely deter future customers and should be more honest with their packages. Their TOS agreement was easy to comprehend and was not hiding any scary terms underneath! The three welcome emails you receive upon sign-up are very informative and offer good initial support. The technical support itself was extremely good too. Their website could definitely use a bit of an update to ease in new customers.

Bonus: Original Review by Doug Hanna

HostMonster is a hosting company that was founded more than ten years ago–in 1996. The company says they host more than 100,000 domains. They are a reputable company that isn’t going anywhere. HostMonster is actually owned by BlueHost, a large web hosting company which we reviewed a while back here. Both companies are now owned by EIG.

As is often the case with web hosting companies that are owned by larger companies, the product and service offerings are nearly identical. Like BlueHost, HostMonster only offers one plan. Except for some minor differences with the number of databases and email accounts offered, the plan at BlueHost and at HostMonster are virtually the same. The features offered are also the same and actually listed in the same order on the two web sites.

The control panels offered by the two companies vary only slightly. The BlueHost control panel has a more standard cPanel skin with only minor edits/changes. The HostMonster control panel looks different than the traditional cPanel X theme, but has all of the same features. Everything to manage email accounts, subdomains, databases, etc. is there and works as expected.

At HostMonster, you get 300 GB of space and 3,000 GB of bandwidth for about $7.95 a month if you pay yearly. The pricing is hidden well within the signup form. If you want to signup for the minimum period (3 months), it is $7.95 a month and a $30 setup fee. Pricing goes down to $5.95 if you choose to pay 24 months in advance.

As far as incentives to signup go, HostMonster is not bad. They offer a sitebuilder, $50 in free ad credits from Yahoo, and a free domain name if you pay 12 or 24 months in advance. The company will not move your site for free, which is very disappointing.

Support at the two companies is also very similar. Like BlueHost, HostMonster requires you to submit your ticket using the company’s web based interface and also has many departments listed. I tried to submit a ticket, but it kept saying my domain and password were not valid. Needless to say, that was quite frustrating. I even found out that BlueHost and HosterMonster even have the same hold music.

A call to their support department was answered within about 3 minutes after dialing. The representative seemed friendly enough, but I did have to spell my domain name three times. Apparently, to submit a ticket, you have to register with their ticket system as well. This was an annoying process that took a good ten minutes. When I asked my actual question, he asked for my domain name again. I had to kindly remind him I already spelt it out three times two minutes before.

Later, when I went to login to Squirrel Mail, the interface was in Japanese. Since I still couldn’t submit a ticket online and had given up on that process, I called again. I was connected within about 5 minutes. The guy who picked up got the language changed to English fairly quickly, but seemed like a drone. “Domain please”, “Hold on please”, “It’s fixed”, and “You’re welcome” were basically the only words spoken throughout the whole call, which lasted about 10 minutes.

In researching HostMonster, I saw several complaints about spotty and sometimes unreliable FTP connections. Other customers also had problems running scripts on HostMonster’s servers. During my testing, the FTP seemed okay. I was able to install WordPress and a CMS without any trouble.

All and all, I wasn’t that impressed by HostMonster. It seems like the company is neglected. You basically get a lot of space and bandwidth and that’s it. If you are looking for an “upload and forget about it” host, HostMonster will work out just fine. If you want or require more, I’d suggest staying clear.

Price: 4.95

URL: hostmonster.com

Disclosure: Web Hosting Craze has an affiliate advertising connection with HostMonster and may be compensated for sales referrals. This shared hosting review is based on the Clickfire web hosting review process. Reviews, ratings and opinions are those of the individual reviewers and not necessarily those of Web Hosting Craze. Prices quoted are normally for the cheapest plans with the lowest possible pricing options which mean that they are usually for the longest terms (2 or 3 years, for example) with the full term typically paid up front and with coupon codes and discounts from our review pages. Prices often change so see individual hosts for the final word.

I joined them because i see so many advertisements especially from affiliates. But only last for one month. My conclusion: something that sells well is not always good.
I think i got bad experience since i joined them too early during rush. They might already have solved their problems, but sorry i urgently need a reliable host.

There is no way hostmonster deserves only 2 star.
I think it should be more like 7 out of 5.
I used webhostingpad.com and others.
However, none of the other host except hostmonster support 24/7 contact, fast supporters, TRULY UNLIMITED DISKSPACE AND BANDWIDTH.
The true wording of hostmonster is “if you don’t use up a lot of CPU process” the diskspace and bandwidth is unlimited. Unlike other host who advertise as unlimited but are not.

I think that so called “Bob” isn’t a real person, but rather a shady HostMonster employee…I’ve seen the same comment on many site which review HostMonster.

I do not believe that HostMonster deservers 2 stars. Since I got my domain and hosting a couple of days ago, they have had 2 downtimes each over 2 hours. Not a good impression at all. I can only hope to get better uptime with this site.

I completely agree – the reviews about Hostmonster.com that normally can be found are faked. The system performance sucks (4 !! second server response time for a web page…), the maximum I get out of them for a FTP upload is 8 Kbps – that is about twice as much as with a dial-up connection. Their first level of support is staffed with incompetent idiots and does not have any clue about what they are doing. The availability is terrible as well. A six hour ping to their gateway showed only 5 packages lost, the server running the web services behind that had 300+ packages lost, try yourself and run only a constant ping to the one of the there hosted machines. Even if the server is pingable, it does not mean that you would be able to retrieve information from your website – the apache server is constantly (about every 54-10 minutes) rebooting because of a “user signal 1? – which is a user defined signal – most likely their “overload protection”.
This company stinks big time, and I will get in contact with the BBB to complain and will move on to another provider.

The only positive thing I have to say is that their first level support was decently responsive (within a day).

hostmonster is the second WORST company i have encountered in my more than 8 year experience as webmaster

with them..
1.) my sites where periodically down for like a day or more
2.) I have got lot of “account half-working” problems, such as the email service went down for days, etc

and now, prepare to hear the WORST

i got my account shut down without any warning simply because “4images have used way too much mysql”, and when i contacted them they urged me to “modify the 4images to make it less resource consuming” .. let me note here, that 4images is included as a standard feature of their hosting package.
Now let me ask.. Dear IDIOTS from hostmonster, why in the world do you provide 4images in your hosting package if you are not able to support it and are going to ban ppl who use it ?????? Also, what right do you have to shut my account down without any warning and any effort to contact me – if i didn’t do anything illegal ??

I pay you to use the service, including the scripts you provide !! if your servers cannot support the script which YOU provide and avdertise – then do not provide it !! Or UPGRADE your servers with the money i pay you !!

and believe or not – they DID NOT turn my account on !

one should SUE them and SHUT DOWN their business at all for FALSE ADVERTISEMENT (advertising that you can use the scripts in fantastico -including 4images-, and then baning you for doing so), and also sue them for HARASSING their customers which includes me not being able to get my site back as of yet because they did it right before they go home for LONG WEEKEND ! and they make me to run around their departments to find someone to talk with

To be honest here, the only hosting (which i seen) that was worse than hostmonster was the one who SOLD the server including all user accounts to another company and didn’t even bother to notify their customers .. sorry, dont remember their name – but they don’t exist anymore anyways.

Conclusion:
STAY AWAY FROM HOSTMONSTER !!
and tell ALL your friends to stay away from them !! they are nothing but a bunch of idiots !

I had two websites on hostmonster for over a year and last weekend they migrated my site without a proper back up and completed DELETED both of my entire websites along with 900 other websites. If you have had problems with hostmonster in the last three years, please get in contact with me to join a class action law suit against them. They are claiming zero responsibility for the horrific act. Not only do they expect us to rebuild our websites at our expense they are expecting us to be o.k. with the loss of revenue this has also created. Hostmonster generates millions of dollars each month in revenue. Corporate America – enough of your passing the buck. It’s time for us to stick together and make they pay for their mistakes. Please contact me to join the class action lawsuit.
305 494 9304 icoachyou@gmail.com Nancy

I agree with most that has been said here. Their support is completely clueless (the only word that explains it with staying politically correct), the system availability and performance the worst I have ever experienced in about 25 years of IT. My cellphone has more CPU power and memory than what they provide.

They fake independent reviews, are overstating their packages (like introducing ridiculous use policies after the contract has been executed!!) and I would love to see somebody suing the heck out of this nonserious company. Good luck!

I stayed for 2 days with HostMonster and moved out, so I didn’t face these horrible stuff that I’m reading here (and I’m quite thankful now that I moved). I moved out of HostMostner because I was planning a blog site and they don’t support wild-card DNS in their Domain Settings (which is essential for WordPress MU to run in subdomain mode).

i have no idea how companies like hostmonster stay in business. from the looks of the prior reviews this month on other review sites, it looks like hostmonster is cleaning house and getting rid of all accounts that are not generating money for them. well guess what? you shouldn’t be advertising the world if you can’t live up to them. they shut our site down this morning (without any prior warning) because of the apparently now standard “sql call” excuse. hostmonster’s name is now TRASH in my book and i will tell everybody far and wide what a ethically challenged “business” they run.

AVOID HOSTMONSTER!!!
I have been with hostmonster for 1.5 years. In Jan 2009 they suspended my account without any notice and refused to put it back.
I did not had any changes in my script/database/ or avarage daily users. They just decided that I am using to much resources. When I asked them can they tell me what exactly is causing the error. Customer service told me I have many empty databases. I told them I am allowed to have 100 per their plan so that should not be an issue.
The refused to help with pointing me to what script they think it is causing the “excess usage”
If you have a static website with 1-2 pages then host with them.
But once you start having few hundred visitors you will get kicked out.

I read similar reviews from other users and this is really annoying.
Anyone interested in filing a compliant I already did at bbb.org but would be happy to have a “union”. contact me via the contact form at eaglesystems.hu

I have used and recommended Hostmonster for at least 3 years now. Now I’m getting more downtime, page not loading, and unable to connect to FTP than ever. It’s always been fine but now it’s like EVERY DOMAIN ON THE BOX that I have is inaccessible for as much as 2-3 HOURS, and SEVERAL times per week at times.

The problem could possibly be with network/connectivity – but either way I look at it, it’s beyond my control: ISP has no problems. Host Monster has no problems. The cable in-between is none of my business. I think it’s time to find a host closer to home.

I’m moving my site back to hurricane electric, he.net. I moved it to hostmonster because that’s what my web dev guy recommended. Good thing I kept my he.net account going.

he.net doesn’t have cpanel or anything else to hold your hand, but they are reliable (and honest), unlike hostmonster.
They also charge you for going over on your bandwidth, which is a good thing once you think about it (keep thinking about it :-).

If you google “hostmonster review” you get pages and pages of fake reviews — with domain names like hostmonster-review.com.

I agree with the previous posts that suggest hostmonster is fraudulent. Stay away!

Just switched my website from a small hosting company that I have used for 7 years to hostmonster. I explained that the site was built in 2004/5 and would hostmonster be able to host the site. Of course they said yes. Well that was last week. My old company uploaded the files and now when I went to look for my site it says hosted by hostmonster. Mhy site has disappeared. I called hostmonster and talked to a guy named Jason and a guy named Mike Morrow and a guy named Todd. They all said that hostmonster can’t host my site since it is in Windows. I was freaked out. Why would they say they could host it, but not ask any questions about the site prior to accepting it. I am not familiar with software terms at all so I thought everything would be okay. Well, when I mentiond getting an attorney they immediately told me they could not talk to me anymore and put a block on my phone so I couldn’t call them. I called back and they gave me the email to their legal department. What should I do??? I have not website now. I guess I will go back to my reliable company. The reason I changed was that everytime I wanted to make a slight change, like a change of address the company I was with would charge me ooodles of dollars. Is there a site that can host me, where I can make my own changes????

Hostmonster is C R A P !!! Don’t waste a single cent on them. I have been trying for 3 weeks to get a single backup of a 50 MB database downloaded and it failed EVERY single time I tried it and when the partial download worked, data came over with 2 Kbps. I lost most of my forum users because the database was constantly unavailable and posts could not be written to the database and they had to retype it.
I now moved to a different company, same database, same software (phpbb3) and performance is incredible compared to the rip off Hostmonster provided.
Again A V O I D H O S T M O N S T E R A T A L L C O S T !!!!

Jayne, try jaguarpc.com. They seem to have good personnel and are for sure not a rip-off as hostmonster. I am just waiting for hostmonster to charge my credit card one more time so I can kick their *ss.

I received an email from Hostmonster informing me that my host was due for renewal. I then get an email saying they had deducted $107 from my credit card! What happened to their $6.95 per month and why didn’t they tell me the amount would be a lot higher. I emailed them asking why this was so much higher ($8.90) and the reply I got was this:

Last year, due to customer requests, we purchased additional equipment of higher quality. We also needed to increase our staff and hire on additional developers. The staff change was to prevent long hold times, and assure quick and accurate customer service. We spent a great deal of money and time on a better accounting system, so that we could prevent human error in account activities. Due to all of the changes, we had to increase our rates. We have kept our prices the same for about five years, but could no longer do so with the changes we’ve made for our customers.

I wrote back saying that I understood that prices increase but they should have had the professionalism and courtesy to inform me before deducting this off my credit card! They then apologized and asked me to contact their feedback department who would look into it. Their feedback department simply sent me a link to a page with these higher rates and wrote:

We didn’t make any official price changes. You paid the promo rate when you signed up. I did say ” You can still get a 6.95 rate if you’re willing to renew for longer.” ++ facts and figures!

Did I forget to mention that it had to be for 3 years! Another clause I find is that should I decide to cancel and move over to another host we forfeit the FREE domain registration!

I would highly recommend NOT using Hostmonster. Purchase a domain with GoDaddy and seek an alternate host. And to think we have another few sites with them!

I will give hostmonster 0 star for their customer service! Especially for the abuse department. They shut down my website without any notice, they seem to be very very unprofessional, and without basic understanding what’s going on in their system. They didn’t confirm information, then they shut down my website, this makes me very mad. The person who work in the customer service, made a huge mistake, send me wrong links, didn’t check my website, then shut down it.

Mark,
Great for you if it works for you. If I buy beer – I expect beer and not waste water with the s*** swimming on top of it… and that is what Hostmonster delivered. To me and the majority of the other people complaining here.

Their service was good for many years until the company got sold to a person that does not have a clue what he/she is doing.

2 are photography sites. One day I called for tech support as a path had changed.
Instead of concentrating on the repair, I was told that one of the photos on the my site was obscene and does not meet their tos.

here is the obscene photo: [editor’s note: we normally don’t allow links to nudity, even if it’s in good taste, sorry]

I said, you must be kidding. She said, I have just suspended you account.
All 5 websites, all email accounts, everything dead in water. Hostmoster is a terrible and ugly monster…

I called and was told they do not allow any nudity on their servers. One breast of a pregnant mother to be in a small black and white image warrants shutting down all other sites, emails everything?

Yep, I was told that I was given a privilege to use their server and that privilege is no longer extended. I was also told that I will be given a refund, prorated for the years I did not use.

Sure enough, Hostmonster terms state that any nudity is not allowed. You may not have a photo of a nude breast on your website, regardless of context.

If you have a embeded link from youtube or some other websites, they will shut down your website without any notice to you. I got this twice, they directly shut down your website. They don’t confirm anything, and some people working in their dispute department are very stupid, they don’t know what’s going on.

They also do system repair a lot, they just disable your website, and do their stuff, they don’t inform you in advance.

Hostmonster is a terrible hosting company. They keep their passwords in the clear, disable accounts without notice, trawl through the files stored in your account, change their “fair use” policy without notice, and disable accounts for using storage space for “storage” instead of “hosting”!

Definitely stay away – they stay in business by hosting for people that can’t tell good service from bad.

What happened to HM during last year? I couln’t have said a bad word about them for about 3 years but few days ago they deactivated my account WITHOUT ANY WARNING the second time. This time their reason was “too much load on MySQL”. Funny, because I haven’t changed my scripts for more then 1 year, neither a single record has been changed for at least 9 months. And for about the same time the number of daily visitors and pageviews went up by maybe 20%. So, if their DB engine cannot handle all the requests, something had to be changed on their side! But they’ll never admit it. When I asked their support why didn’t they warn me as soon as they started having problems (which in no way could have emerged all of a sudden). The answer was basically a template not answering my question.
So my guess is that they are either using crappier hardware, trying to squeeze more websites on the same machine, or they are just clueless and cannot configure or maintain their systems properly.
In any case, HM seems to go to s*it in last couple months. Hopefully they get over it and start taking their business seriously again.

I had a similar incident with HostDime who deactivated my account due to WordPress resource usage. I had to do some fast talking and install WPSuperCache to get them to put me back up. Did HostMonster reactivate your account?

Hostmonster is just that a monster. Save time and frustration! Don’t even think about using Hostmonster. They will suspend you without notice, and then won’t give you a reason for the suspension. I was with them for two years, then they suspend my sites. NOT a way to run a business. Very disappointing.

Hostmonster is marginally ok for personal websites but if you need a site for your business avoid this company like the plague, because that’s what they will become to your business a plague that will ruin it. They have ours and like others have mentioned they take 0 responsibility for their screw ups, of which there were too many to list.

I had account with them for almost two years. All of a sudden they deleted the account with 50 emails. I lost all the data. They do not have good explanation why they deleted. They claim that they had sent email in December because of Spam emails and after 9 months later without any warning they completely deleted the account.

Customer service is very poor. When you call them it takes them long time to repsond and long to answer any questions.

u guys are retards, its not even close to as bad as ur making it out, tech support sometimes is in india, but who isnt now-a-days . . . .

as for deleting ur stuff, thats ur own fault, they didnt do it for no reason, i have had an account with them for over 3 years, worst i have seen was them suspending my account cus my time was up, and my email went to my spam box, again MY OWN FAULT, and they didnt delete anything at all, i paid for another year, and it was back up and running in less then 5 minutes, nvr experienced any downtime with them besides that

so all these comments are just stupid ppl pissed off that they didnt take care of their end, anything they got the prolly deserved . . .

Let me just refresh this page with a recent review. Joined Hostmonster last week. Never had a hosting problem with my last company, but moved for the unlimited space. Twice already my site has been down. Leaving hostmonster this week.

We had a serious problem for which hostmonster stated was not their problem. The customer services was very poor and thy said there weas nothing they could do. My SEO guy said it is a problem with the web site hosting company The Error Warning – visiting this web site may harm your computer! caused serious issues with our clients. When I switched providers I had no problems.

Got this response from their customer service when the servers were down for a good 8 hrs on Sep 16th,

“We certainly apologize for the inconvenience. The city which we are located in was
working on a major issue near our building last night. The local power company
requested that we shut off all electrical systems until the issue was resolved.
This unfortunately included all backup power systems. We were fortunately able to
shut down all systems so that all customer data is safe. After the servers were
brought back online, there were multiple different issues with bringing them back up
to regular status. Our administrators are working to resolve these issues as soon
as possible.”

And their responses when I ask them why dun they have any offsite servers,

“I am sorry to hear that, but as we do not provide offsite back up servers and the
back ups we do do are courtesy back ups only we could not have moved your site when
it happened. If you decide to cancel please just let our billing department know and
they will take care of you.”

So if you are running a critical business, stay away from these guys. Go with those with bigger scale and more backups.

@Winzy it seems strange that the local power company would ask them to turn of battery backup power. I have to say I would have to have to cut HostMonster some slack given that the price point is under $10.00 per month. Then, there is the question of puting a mission critical business on cheap shared hosting as well.

I’m so glad I read the good reviews and bad reviews… I have to say, The bad outweighs the good. This is truly sad. anyone have a good recommendation on a great site at a great price, please email me at german6969[at]hotmail.com

My experience in the last 24 hours had been very bad. When you sign up you are asked if you want to transfer a domain. This I did when I signed up a year ago. It seems all they did was change the nameservers so I could upload my website. I discovered this when I went to change my nameservers again to point to my new hosting company. I am now having to contact my old hosting company to get things resolved. This is wasting my time. I am now moving to professional hosting with autoresponder at goldbar hosting. DO NOT USE HOSTMONSTER!

Boss I agree the service sucks its been 10 days only and i found server down for the 5 th time talk to the customer care they are happy to say we are sorry like a parrot send email to feedback they don’t actually care and give the same answer.
I dont know what to do now, guess i’m stuck beacause of the fact i can afford my website to be down for a day or two which will be needed if i have to move but yes they are the worst in all terms….

I have three accounts with them and all three having several issues with site loading and server. Today, the server where my account is is down since over 3 hours. 99% up time? My *ss!
I pay quiet a few bucks to them but I am going to pay a little more and change all my accounts to hostgator. Never had any problem with my site there.

Hostmonster is down almost every day for between 5 minutes and four hours. As noted in other reviews, the are friendly in their service but at the end of the day they don’t fix the problem. I must echo the sentiments of many: Don’t use them. You cannot rely on them to be up. Very disappointing.

Hostmonster offers you the world at low prices but once you are depending on them they start harrasing and bullying you by suspending your account or forcing you to upgrade to a high cpu server. They start charging you more when they know you can’t just leave them. They are good when they want to but they can’t be trusted. I suggest that if you have to use them, don’t have many websites with them.

I have many website with them totaling more than 1500 PV/day, I never had any bad experience with them since I signed with them back in 2006/7, the live chat helped me many times.
My overall rating would be 7/10

+++ Everything work fine (mail, uptime, speed)
+++ you get more than what you paid for
— overselling space and bandwidth, of course it’s not unlimited!
— support response time, I’ve seen better
— They don’t support wildcard dns

I am a customer service guru and these clowns are a case study in “HOW NOT TO.”

I’ve had problems of one sort or another ever since I began using their services for a piece of software that I understood that they supported.

Apart from being told that I could not have an invoice for paying annually and that I’d simply have to pay via credit card because “checks were obsolete,” I’ve simply held my nose hoping that my service arrangement would simply go off without further hitches.

Their “customer support” staff is arrogant and condescending, do not at all seem eager to actually correct issues, throw their issues back in your face, and generally leave everything to be desired. Any and all of the comments attached here complaining about their customer service I have ZERO trouble believing are not FULLY justified.

They were inexpensive, but given that, I realized that I’d made a huge mistake shortly after signing up. but these things take time to research and get going, which has prevented me from finding another hosting site. That will change here shortly. I cannot handle anymore of this nonsense.

…. oh, and this is the best, most recently, an entire module just up and disappeared from their servers, the most sensitive info no less, which is what they told me, but “it’s not their fault.”

Hostmonster is misleading clients, it says unlimited space, but it is not. They give you a limit on how many files you can post, limit on videos, and the wost thing is they give you a limit of 1100 Tables, Hostmonster is only for someone who is looking to create a basic HTML website. Trust me I found out the hard way, hostmonster suck!

after a long time we purchased this shared server and we had over 20 small websites ( only 3 of them were dynamic with database all other just html ) they shut down our account for violating the terms. After many ours of research WE found out we had been hacked and due to this the hostmonster instead of notifying us shut down the whole server. Folks what i dit whas to tranfer in a day all of my clients websites to a dedicated server with real support…
here is the email i wrote to them

we are so disappointed.

you shut down a server with so many of our clients websitew in it and you just send an email saying we violated the terms…etc.

After many hours of research we found out we have been hacked and maybe that is what you noticed.

Instead of notifying us just put an entire server down.

After so many years we have been your clients.

This is ridiculous and we will act in the same way mentioning and reviewing your evil and unprofessional ways through out the internet.

I almost went with Host Monster until a friend of mine got me to sign with GoDaddy. I’m still not happy with my hosting, but I stand by making the right decision not to go with Host Monster, I have heard too many bad things.

I’ve had to deal with these guys through a client. I have to say, this is one of the worst experiences I have had.

Their tech support on live chat failed to help me resolve any issues both times I’ve contacted them. Both times, they sounded completely clueless suggesting things that I, as a server admin, and web developer, know could not be the issue. I had a problem with the PHP CLI not doing what it should, and the guy starts messing with htaccess files, this has nothing to do with the PHP CLI.

They charge monthly for certs… I mean come on.

@the guy saying they are sometimes in India: I couldn’t care less if it’s *sometimes*, or that everyone else is doing it. If you’re getting a business website hosted somewhere, you make sure they have good support. Not crap where they don’t know what they’re doing, and you’re left up a creek while they give you the copy-and-paste from the manual runaround.

Cheap hosting does NOT mean good hosting. If you want business-grade hosting, get some one with good support, not just good marketing crap on their homepage.